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Motorola DEXT with Motoblur hands-on and picture gallery

Motorola has been showing off its first Android phone, the DEXT. Its party piece is Motorola's very own Motoblur interface, which bolts onto Android j

16 September 2009/12:48BST

Motorola claims it will make navigating your way through the labyrinth of social networks and messages of our daily lives. It cunningly groups everything together, even pulling info from Facebook profiles to add to your contacts' information.

As usual with Android-toting handsets, you can spread your favourite apps and widgets across five different home screens. The main screen on the DEXT we tried was loaded with status update, Messages and Happenings widgets.

And this is where the Motoblur UI comes into its own – for instance, with status updates you can choose to update one or all of your statuses at the same time. Could be a bit of a timesaver when you want to tell the world just how much you enjoyed that last piece of toast. Mmm, toast.

Messages – this shows you the most recent messages you've received, again, across the spectrum of your social networks, email and text communications. The most recent ones pop up on the homescreen, and you can delve deeper into a full history.

Happenings – this shows you status updates, tweets and general social activity, and is again arranged with the latest updates easily available, and the full history available through the main menu.

Contacts – this is one of the features we really liked, and is also a stalker's dream. You can browse through content by contact, so all that person's social networking activity, and all your communication with them is displayed in the one place.

Motorola has also added a couple of other cunning features, a GPS locate function for finding a lost phone, and a remote erase function for when some thieving little %£^@$% gets his hands on your DEXT and you don't want him to get his hands on your personal data too.

But never fear, Motoblur backs up your data to its online service, so when you drop into an Orange store the next day, all teary eyed, they can load your new handset with all your old data. Genius.

It's available in October exclusively on Orange, for free on a £35/month, 24 month contract.

Look out for a full hands-on in our video section, and take a look at the hands-on pics below.

5MP autofocus camera

3.5mm headphone jack

You can swipe through all the latest "happenings"

The Universal Inbox (top left icon) puts all your communications in the one place.

Updates and messages can be viewed by individual contact

Additional info about contacts is pulled in from linked social network profiles (bottom section on screen)

Status updates can be broadcast to all your social networking services at once.